In the Vein
by Mlee.Write
Summary: Three bullets, severing three lives. Lisbon ties off the vein, eyes bleary from blood loss. Red John bleeds out on the ground. Jane's own wounds, more insidious, will not heal. AU set post Strawberries & Cream II
1. Chapter 1

_**Hey, guess who totally doesn't have time to write an angst-ridden multi-chap but is doing it anyway?**_

Title: In the Vein

Author:

Rating: T for language and sexual situations

Spoilers: Through Strawberries & Cream

Summary: Three bullets, severing three lives. Lisbon ties off the vein, eyes bleary from blood loss. Red John bleeds out on the ground. Jane's own wounds, more insidious, will not heal.

Author's Note: This is an AU fic in which Timothy Carter really was Red John (I always thought he was _much_ creepier than McAllister). Set immediately after Strawberries & Cream II (so yep, no Wainright, no Lorelei, none of that). Eventual Jisbon because of course.

_**Prologue**_

Teresa Lisbon was going into shock. She could feel the wet heat of her blood, staining her sleeve. Her arm _burned_ like it was on fire. So that's what a GSW felt like. She tried to flex her hand, but couldn't. Her arm hung limp, like a broken wing.

She looked down at O'Laughlin's black IPhone, her conversation with Red John playing in her mind, the serial killer's oddly effeminate voice echoing, bouncing off the inside of her skull.

Win some.

Lose some.

Jane had asked her to hit redial. Why? _Because he was with Red John. He needed to see who answered the phone._

Oh Jesus.

Oh God, no.

She reached for the IPhone to dial Jane, to demand he stop and wait for help. Were Rigsby and Cho there? No. No they were probably on their way to her.

Oh, God. Oh, God.

Her fingers were slippery with blood and her hand was shaking. She fumbled with the phone, her pulse speeding up. She couldn't unlock the screen, couldn't make the damn thing work. She stabbed at the little button on the bottom repeatedly, but all she did was make it sticky and uncooperative. Blood welled in the grooves of the phone, smeared across the screen, beading up against the screen protector.

With a sob she slid to her side. The room was starting to go back around the edges. The phone fell from her grasp.

"Teresa!"

Madeline's voice cut through her fog, authoritative, comforting in its harsh tone. Madeline was pushing her onto her back.

"Jane's with Red John," she said. Her teeth were chattering. "He's going to kill him."

She wasn't sure of her pronouns. Jane was going to kill Red John. Red John was going to kill Jane. Someone was going to die.

"I know," Madeline said, even though she didn't. Then, in a sharp bark, "Van Pelt! Get over here! There's nothing you can do for him!"

Teresa was vaguely aware that Van Pelt was sobbing, a low keening sound. Or maybe that her.

She knew that Jane was devoted to his revenge, but she also knew he underestimated Red John. She had always felt that the killer was evil, unnatural. Jane drew rationality around him like a comforting blanket. He didn't believe in the devil. He didn't believe in God. He didn't believe that some human beings were so depraved that they were no longer of this world.

Red John was a man, she knew, but he wore the devil's horns, and if she touched her cross when she thought of him, it wasn't out of superstition, but a reminder that real evil existed, and it had power.

Jane had suffered for his pride once and she was terrified that he'd do so again. Red John had a network of followers. He was legion. He could have Jane cornered.

Her teeth were clacking, her jaw trembling. She felt cold.

She heard Madeline say, "Help me tie this off," but it sounded far away. Something pinched her arm, sending a searing bolt of pain down to her fingers. She screamed, a choked sound.

"I'm sorry, Teresa. We have to stop the bleeding."

They were making a tourniquet, she realized.

There were four hands on her now, Van Pelt's and Madeline's. She heard sirens in the distance.

"He's going to kill him," she repeated, her tongue feeling thick in her mouth.

Red John was going to kill Jane. With the same knife he used to kill Angela? With a gun? Would he drive to Jane to madness, break him so his body lived but his mind withered and atrophied?

He couldn't do this alone. He needed them there. He needed the team. You _always_ called for backup.

Or Jane would kill Red John. He just might do it. But then what? Go on the run? Spend his life in prison?

Murder was a mortal sin.

Her heart was racing too fast in her throat. She felt like she couldn't draw enough air, like she was going to drown on dry land.

She realized she was being moved, that new voices were speaking. EMTs. The EMTs were here.

"She's losing too much blood," she heard Madeline say.

"Nicked an artery," someone else said.

Everything else happened very quickly and she wasn't sure of the order of events. She was put into an ambulance. IV lines were put in her arm. Her shirt was cut away.

"I need to talk to Jane," she said to a paramedic. "He's on my team. He's in serious danger."

"We're going to get you to a hospital, ma'am," was the reply. He wasn't even looking at her. He was examining her arm.

"I need my phone," she said. "I need to call him, to warn him. He's in grave danger. _Please_."

Jane needed back up. Did Cho and Rigsby even know? Did anyone? Help wasn't on the way. He was stranded. Alone. That was unconscionable. It was her duty to keep him as safe as possible.

"I need to call for backup!" She was getting hysterical now. "Please, Jesus, please listen to me!"

He wasn't listening to her. Something sharp and cruel bit her arm. She screamed. He'd pinched off the artery, she realized.

She squeezed her eyes closed, tears running down her temples into her hair. He might already be dead. She wouldn't know until she woke up from surgery. If she woke up.

She sobbed, one choking, raspy sound. Then she blacked out.

X X X

Jane drank his tea, but didn't taste it.

The mall had suddenly become very quiet, eerily so. He heard the woman behind the coffee cart sob, then dash away, crouched over, using her hands to propel her forward.

Red John was dead. It was over.

He should feel lighter somehow, freer. But he didn't.

It was like a heavy weight had been placed on his chest, on top of the one that always sat there, the weight of his wife and daughter, ever present, always painful. Now it was doubled, and he realized he was hyperventilating.

He looked at his hand, watched it tremble so severely that tea sloshed out of the cup and onto his lap.

He couldn't breathe normally and he felt like his heart would burst. He was having a panic attack. He recognized the symptoms, catalogued them distantly, almost impassively, as if his body and mind were totally disjointed.

He'd had plenty during his breakdown, during his stay in the psychiatric ward. He knew the unpleasant sensation, the feeling of dread, of dying, even though rationally it was just an elevated heart rate and labored breathing. It still felt like he was choking, having a heart attack.

Strange.

He used to take Xanax for this. Didn't have Xanax now. Not that it would matter; he wasn't about to be found by the police with a controlled substance in his system.

He was surprised the police hadn't arrived yet, actually. You would think a shooting at a mall would draw them immediately. Mass shootings were a sad reality now.

Of course this wasn't a mass shooting, but he imagined it was being reported as that initially.

He glanced at Red John's body. He'd seen dead bodies before, plenty of times, and they were always a little unsettling. His brain always registered the wrongness of the body, the pallor, the position, the facial expression. It was grim. An uncanny valley.

Red John looked like all the other dead bodies. Slack. Strange. Kind of chalky.

There was the unpleasant odor of evacuated bowels. That was just part of the process of dying though. He didn't think Red John had actually felt a moment's fear. Just surprise. Then pain. Then nothing.

He wondered how Lisbon was doing. The paramedics would be there soon, wouldn't they? He reached for his phone to call her, or Van Pelt, or Hightower, but it was slippery in his hand and it fell to the floor with a crack.

His fingers were shaking violently.

Strange.

_**Please review? Please?**_


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Note: This is where the AU part of the story comes in. Jane never stands trial for Timothy Carter's murder, and Carter is Red John.

I sometimes wondered why they made Jane celibate in the series (other than to show his single minded devotion to revenge and how broken he was emotionally). I think if they had made him a darker character, or in any way sexually manipulative, I probably would have died.

So guess what I'm doing!

Chapter One

The last time Teresa Lisbon had spoken to Jane, he had been about to commit murder. Charges were never brought against him for killing Timothy Carter, aka Red John, but she knew it was murder nonetheless.

He had killed in cold blood.

Sometimes she wondered why she felt so betrayed by that. Jane had made no secret of his desire to kill the murderer of his wife and child. She should have expected it. But part of her had always held out hope that she would be able to reach him, to save him before it ever came to that point.

She was on her last day of disability, straightening up her condo in preparation for going to work the next morning. Her shirt was pressed. Her gun had been cleaned and put back together. The living room smelled of lemon Pledge and gun oil.

There was a vase of dried roses on her kitchen table, sitting among of sea of unopened junk mail and bills yet to be paid and then shredded. They were her last contact with Jane.

She'd woken up after surgery with two dozen pink roses next to her bed and a card that just said, "Thank you. For everything."

He had thanked her for her role in the murder. She was complicit.

Lisbon wasn't naive. She knew that Red John was a monster, was evil. If anyone deserved to die, it was him. She felt no pity for the fallen man. She felt pity for Jane, and a little fear.

She had killed in the line of duty, and it changed a person. Even when totally justified, it ate at your soul, tore you apart a little bit. She had to believe that only God chose when people died. She didn't support the death penalty, although she never voiced that at work. She saw what happened when man took the power of life and death in his hands, and it was ugly. That's why she did her job.

Timothy Carter had been carrying a gun when Jane shot him. Jane's official statement was that Carter reached for the gun, threatened his life, when Jane pulled the trigger. There was nothing to contradict his statement.

When the police had searched Carter's house they'd found not only evidence of the Red John murders, but a woman locked in a secret room in his basement. She'd been kept there for a year, raped repeatedly, tortured.

Even if they had their doubts about Jane's innocence, it had been easier to paint him as a member of law enforcement doing his job. Making Red John the victim of _anything _would have been a media disaster. Case closed. The fact that Jane had been hunting Carter for years was never discussed.

He never came to see her in the hospital. He never saw any of them after he was cleared. Rigsby said they came into work the next day and Jane's things, what little they were, had been boxed up and hauled off.

He vanished, just as suddenly as he'd shown up.

Again, she shouldn't have been surprised. He'd made his intentions very clear. Jane was using the CBI as a means to get to Red John, nothing more. If she thought that perhaps he'd found a calling using his unique skills to help people, it had been wishful thinking.

She doubted very much that she would ever see him again.

That wound hurt worse than the one in her arm.

X X X

Patrick Jane sat at the bar in the Crimson Hat, nursing a Scotch and trying to ignore the sour burn in his gut.

Vegas had been an easy refuge, a place where he could earn a quick buck and no one questioned a loner wandering through. He'd been careless though, earned a reputation as a shyster too quickly. Hence his black eye and aching jaw.

"Looking a little rough, Paddy," said a lilting, female voice.

He turned to see Lorelei, his usual waitress, watching him. She was wearing the God awful ensemble they made the waitresses here wear—a low cut red blazer, fingerless gloves. Beyond tacky. The outfit did afford him a nice glimpse of her ample cleavage, however. He was too drunk not to be caught looking.

She smirked at him.

He titled his glass to gesture to his swollen eye, the ice clinking. "I may have accidentally gotten a man in touch with his long departed mother," he admitted.

"And?" she prompted.

"And the mother was less departed and more living in Florida, as it turns out," he said. "Oops."

"Hmm." Lorelei shook her head. She'd been flirting with him for the past week, leaving not so subtle hints that he should ask her out.

He wasn't sure why he didn't. He'd been lonely in Vegas. Loathe as he was to admit it, he missed the CBI team. He missed the friendly banter between Cho and Rigsby, and Grace's endless naiveté. He wondered how she was doing. She'd had to shoot her fiancé after all. Probably he should have called.

Meh.

"You should put some ice on that," Lorelei told him.

He shrugged, swirling the liquid in his glass. "Got enough ice right here."

She leaned against the bar, her hip cocked, the pose casual but calculated. "I'm done in five. You could come to my place and I could patch you up."

She'd finally gotten tired of waiting for him to make a move.

He looked down into his glass, staring intently as if waiting for the Scotch to divine his future. He was tempted to go. He'd always liked brunettes. But… But he wasn't tempted, not really. Nothing was rising to attention, per se. He felt hollow inside, like he experienced everything a beat too late.

It wasn't the alcohol dulling his senses either. Even stone cold sober he seemed to be watching the world pass around him, not actually experiencing it. It was like he'd lost the ability to see color, to taste, to smell. Everything was…fuzzy.

"I think I'm just going to call it a night," he said quietly.

She raised an eyebrow. "Suit yourself, Paddy."

She sauntered off and he set the glass down. He ran his fingers over the white patch of skin where his wedding band had once been. The mark was starting to fade, to blend in with the rest of his skin.

Above the bar a muted TV played the national news. He watched the ticker tape below a talking head, reading it without really paying attention. Then a name scrolled by.

Teresa Lisbon.

He sat up a little straighter and read the blurb. Apparently she was being honored with a medal or something for the sting that brought down Red John.

Lisbon.

She deserved it, certainly. If anyone did, it was her. She'd held that team together and kept a steady head when they were faced with moles and the possibility of losing their jobs or being killed. She was a tough cookie.

He wondered why she hadn't called him. He expected she was disappointed in him. Made sense, murder being a sin and all that.

She had no right to judge. She hadn't found her spouse and daughter lying dead in a pool of their own blood.

He tossed a few bills onto the bar and staggered drunkenly out to the street. He was tired of Vegas. He was tired of neon lights and loose women and easy cash. He was tired of Scotch.

Maybe he needed to go back, just to sort himself out. Just a little bit.

X X X

She was the first person in the office, as usual, a steaming latte warm in her hand.

When Lisbon breezed into the bullpen one Thursday morning she stopped cold, the coffee sloshing onto her hand, scalding her. She swore under her breath.

Jane was on the couch, ostensibly sleeping, one arm tucked behind his head. Like he'd never left.

Son of a bitch.

He turned his head to look at her, his eyes sleepy and crinkled. "Morning, Lisbon."

Like nothing had ever happened. Like he hadn't been gone for six months. Like he hadn't left the team the minute he'd gotten what he wanted.

Two could play at this game.

"Morning Jane," she said casually. She headed for her office like they had nothing to discuss.

She dropped her briefcase on her desk, set her latte down and began powering up her computer. A few moments later Jane appeared in her doorway, hands in his pockets, leaning against the doorjamb.

He looked rough, his usually pressed suit wrinkled. His hair was too long and messy and he looked as though someone had punched him in the eye. He had a nice green bruise on his jaw too.

She wondered if he'd run afoul of someone he'd tried to con and had fled back here for protection. Bastard.

"How's the arm?" he asked.

"Fine," she replied. "Healed."

There was an awkward silence as he stared at her, waiting no doubt to be scolded. She sat down and began to pull up her email, sorting through what needed attention now and what could be dealt with later.

"So… Do I still have a job?" he asked.

"You're the man who brought down the most notorious serial killer in state history," she replied evenly. "I'd say so."

He looked at her for a moment, then said, "Good."

She gave him a smile that didn't reach her eyes, and when left to resume his spot on the couch, she pretended her hands weren't shaking.

_**Please review?**_


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